Last Saturday, Mark and I decided to go to Gibraltar, the tiny peninsula off southern Spain that is less than 50 miles from Africa. It's four hours by bus ride which meant we spent a lot more time driving than down there, but definately still worth it.
I think largely due to growing up in Missouri, I've always loved the ocean, and I started getting excited at this first glance of it (trust me, it's back there)...
After driving along the coast for a while, we finally saw what the people of Gibraltar call "The Rock", which pretty much is a big rock that makes up every bit of Gibraltar that hasn't been reclaimed from the sea.
In fact, in our tour given by Dave, an Englishman who was everything I dreamed an English tour-guide could be, told us that around 50 acres have been reclaimed from the sea, largely by Dutchmen, who are "jolly ingenious", and to our left we saw the old walls that used to protect the town from the sea, but now sit right in the middle of things.
Here's another interesting fact for you, all of Gibraltar's water comes from desalinating plants, and here's a waterfall that drains the very salty leftovers back to the sea.
Like I said, Gibraltar is basically a big rock, but historically it's been a fortress for the Moors, Spanish, Portuguese, and finally the British, and to hoist the cannons up high on "The Rock", there are these pulley-rings along every street...
There's definately a military feel around Gibraltar, which makes an interesting contrast to the people who live there who tend to be expatriate Brits or Moroccans or Italians, looking to get away. There's a giant 20-ton cannon on the top of the rock, which could easily shoot into Africa, but it's never been fired in anger. Also impressive but completely irrelevant is a 100-ton cannon we passed on our tour, which could fire farther than anyone could see when it was constructed, but takes a half-hour to load and an hour to maneuver. Thus, it didn't take long for the British to realize their prize-cannon was not very practical.
Later, we got to go into St. Michael's caves, which go down right into the heart of the rock, and are very cool, but for all you long-time readers, are absolutely dwarfed by those of Aracena.
Something very cool is that they have a small amphitheater in the caves where they hold concerts and speeches and such.
We then made our way out to a great lookout point with the lighthouse and a view of Africa.
That little piece of land is Africa, Morocco specifically.
Probably the highlight of the trip has to be the monkeys. Gibraltar has about 250 little monkeys living there that most likely came over as sailor's pets from somewhere in northern Africa. Winston Churchill declared once that the British would only leave Gibraltar when the monkeys did, and in the 1950's when the monkey population was dwindling, the British went to Africa and brought over more.
These monkeys are very much used to people always around and if you're not careful, they'll steal your hat/lunch/souvenir, etc.
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